About the artist

Irving Lee Dorsey was an African American pop and R&B singer during the 1960s. His biggest hits were "Ya Ya" and "Working in the Coal Mine". Much of his work was produced by Allen Toussaint, with instrumental backing provided by The Meters.

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Allen Toussaint was an American musician, songwriter, arranger and record producer, who was an influential figure in New Orleans R&B from the 1950s to the end of the century, described as "one of popular music’s great backroom figures." Many musicians recorded Toussaint's compositions, including "Java", "Mother-in-Law", "I Like It Like That", "Fortune Teller", "Ride Your Pony", "Get Out of My Life, Woman", "Working in the Coal Mine", "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "Here Come the Girls", "Yes We Can Can", "Play Something Sweet", and "Southern Nights". He was a producer for hundreds of recordings, among the best known of which are "Right Place, Wrong Time", by his longtime friend Dr. John, and "Lady Marmalade", by Labelle.

Rufus C. Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm-and-blues, funk, soul and blues singer, songwriter, dancer, DJ and comic entertainer from Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded for several labels, including Chess Records and Sun Records in the 1950s, before becoming established in the 1960s and 1970s at Stax Records. He is best known for his novelty dance records, including "Walking the Dog", "Do the Funky Chicken" and " Push and Pull". According to the Mississippi Blues Commission, "Rufus Thomas embodied the spirit of Memphis music perhaps more than any other artist, and from the early 1940s until his death. .. occupied many important roles in the local scene."He began his career as a tap dancer, vaudeville performer, and master of ceremonies in the 1930s. He later worked as a disc jockey on radio station WDIA in Memphis, both before and after his recordings became successful. He remained active into the 1990s and as a performer and recording artist was often billed as "The World's Oldest Teenager". He was the father of the singers Carla Thomas and Vaneese Thomas and the keyboard player Marvell Thomas.

Booker T. & the M.G.'s is an instrumental R&B/funk band that was influential in shaping the sound of Southern soul and Memphis soul. The original members of the group were Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr. In the 1960s, as members of the house band of Stax Records, they played on hundreds of recordings by artists such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and Albert King. They also released instrumental records under their own name, of which the best known is the 1962 hit single "Green Onions". As originators of the unique Stax sound, the group was one of the most prolific, respected, and imitated of its era. By the mid-1960s, bands on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to sound like Booker T. & the M.G.'s.In 1965, Steinberg was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn, who played with the group until his death in 2012. Al Jackson, Jr. was murdered in 1975, after which Dunn, Cropper and Jones reunited on numerous occasions using various drummers, including Willie Hall, Anton Fig, Steve Jordan and Steve Potts.

The Mar-Keys, formed in 1958, were an American studio session band for Stax Records, in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s. As the first house band for the label, their backing music formed the foundation for the early 1960s Stax sound.

Donald James Randolph, better known by the stage name Don Covay, was an American R&B, rock and roll and soul singer and songwriter most active from the 1950s to the 1970s. His most successful recordings include "Mercy, Mercy", "See-Saw", and "It's Better to Have". He also wrote "Pony Time", a US number 1 hit for Chubby Checker, and "Chain of Fools", a Grammy-winning song for Aretha Franklin. He received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994.Writing in the Washington Post after his death, Terence McArdle said, "Mr. Covay’s career traversed nearly the entire spectrum of rhythm-and-blues music, from doo-wop to funk."

Joseph Arrington Jr., better known as Joe Tex, was an American musician who gained success in the 1960s and 1970s with his brand of Southern soul, which mixed the styles of country, gospel and rhythm and blues.His career started after he was signed to King Records in 1955 following four wins at the Apollo Theater. Between 1955 and 1964, he struggled to find hits and by the time he finally recorded his first hit, "Hold What You've Got" in 1964, he had recorded 30 previous singles that were deemed failures on the charts. He went on to have four million-selling hits, "Hold What You've Got", "Skinny Legs and All", "I Gotcha", and "Ain't Gonna Bump No More". Joe Tex was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame five times, most recently in 2016.

Irma Thomas is an American singer from New Orleans. She is known as the "Soul Queen of New Orleans".Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success. In 2007, she won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain, her first Grammy in a career spanning over 50 years.

William Edward "Little Willie" John was an American rock 'n' roll and R&B singer who performed in the 1950s and early 1960s. He is best known for his successes on the record charts, with songs such as "All Around the World", "Need Your Love So Bad", and "Fever". An important figure in R&B music of the 1950s, John was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Ann Lee Peebles is an American singer and songwriter who gained celebrity for her Memphis soul albums of the 1970s for Hi Records. Two of her most popular songs are "I Can't Stand the Rain", which she wrote with her husband Don Bryant and radio broadcaster Bernie Miller, and "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down". In 2014, Ann Peebles was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“ My thing as a singer is truth,” says Bell. “And if I can hear truth in a song, then I keep it.” Since his earliest days as an artist, this legend-ary Stax Records soul man has been delivering the truth with one of the most remarkable voices in all of popular music. While other R&B titans have made their legacies with vocal gymnastics, screams and shots, Bell has carved out his niche with a more subtle approach. His style is all about phrasing and inflection, simmering tension and re-straint. It’s flowing and graceful, a kind of Tai Chi Soul. And whether he’s singing a ballad or an up-tempo tune, Bell always has a direct line to the deep poetry of the heart.

Now, decades after his last major release, William Bell returns to the relaunched Stax label with his definitive statement as an artist, ‘this is Where I I live, A 12 song collaboration with Grammy winning producer John Leventhal, it is a beautiful summary of Bell’s journey as a singer and songwriter. The album contains echoes of the past, but more im-portantly, it embodies a contemporary flair that leads the way forward to a new chapter in already well-storied career.

“This is the first major label album I’ve done in a long time,” Bell says, “and to have it be part of Stax is just great. I feel like I’ve come full circle, and that gives me new energy, like I’m starting all over again.”

Wilson Pickett was an American singer and songwriter.A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, many of which crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100. Among his best-known hits are "In the Midnight Hour", "Land of 1,000 Dances", "Mustang Sally", and "Funky Broadway".Pickett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, in recognition of his impact on songwriting and recording.

The Staple Singers were an American gospel, soul and R&B singing group. Roebuck "Pops" Staples, the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha, Pervis, and Mavis. Yvonne replaced her brother when he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and again in 1970. They are best known for their 1970s hits "Respect Yourself", "I'll Take You There", "If You're Ready", and "Let's Do It Again", which with one exception peaked on the Hot 100 within a week from Christmas Day. While the family name is Staples, the group used "Staple" commercially.

Solomon Burke was an American preacher and singer, who shaped the sound of rhythm and blues as one of the founding fathers of soul music in the 1960s and a "key transitional figure in the development of soul music from rhythm and blues.He had a string of hits including "Cry to Me", "If You Need Me", "Got to Get You Off My Mind", "Down in the Valley" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Burke was referred to as "King Solomon", the "King of Rock 'n' Soul", "Bishop of Soul" and the "Muhammad Ali of soul". Due to his minimal chart success in comparison to other soul music greats such as James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding, Burke has been described as the genre's "most unfairly overlooked singer" of its golden age. Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler referred to Burke as "the greatest male soul singer of all time".Burke's most famous recordings, which spanned five years in the early 1960s, bridged the gap between mainstream R&B and grittier R&B. Burke was "a singer whose smooth, powerful articulation and mingling of sacred and profane themes helped define soul music in the early 1960s."

Curtis Ousley, who performed under the stage name King Curtis, was an American saxophonist known for rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, blues, funk and soul jazz. Variously a bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director and record producer. Adept at tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, he was best known for his distinctive riffs and solos such as on "Yakety Yak", which later became the inspiration for Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax" and his own "Memphis Soul Stew".